How did the East India Company change the world?

From the Opium Wars to the Boston Tea Party, the British East India Company had a profound effect on the course of history. Tune in and learn more about the influence of the British East India Company in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candid Keener, joined by staff writer jam Graph.
Hello Candice, I have a new last name, yes, but
the content is all the same on the inside, Sarah,

(00:23):
don't you're a different person to me. I'm smiling a
lot more. Have a wonderful, heavy but same same history
buff as always, and today we actually have a very
seemingly dry but quite juicy topic for you guys. That's right.
Today we're talking about the East India Company, and we
should clarify that there are actually a couple of East
India companies and when people, when historians talk about the

(00:45):
East India Company, they usually refer to the British, which
is what we're gonna focus on. But we're gonna we're
gonna talk about the other ones as well. Yeah. So
if you like t and you love opium, this is
the episode for you. Yeah. I think you can see
that for sure. To give you some background, Uh, what's
really important is that a back back, a few years
after Columbus discovered the America's the Portuguese explorer Vasco da

(01:09):
Gama actually discovered a water route to the East Indies
on the other side of the world. So this made
it so much easier to travel. It's faster to travel
to the East Indies, which had so much, so many
commodities that Europe was after, especially spices, and we ever
had British food. I mean, it's not it's not. It's
pretty blandish, listener, but that's exactly why Europe was so

(01:33):
so after the East India Indies. It was it had
so many good spices, and we all know how good
they can be. So Queen Elizabeth, a very enterprising woman,
thought I really want a piece of that pie, and
she came up with a very innovative way in which
she could raise enough money in addition to what was
available in the Royal Treasury to get a bunch of
ships together to go and make a successful trade route

(01:56):
for England. That's right, and it's interesting to note that
the Dutch charter got a head start on England at
this time, even though they didn't have their official charter yet.
They were doing really well over in the East Indies.
Like I said, they didn't have an official charter and
this was causing a lot of problems back home for them.
Because individual companies would compete each other and flood the

(02:16):
market with spices, and so the profits would drop and
they wouldn't have enough to fund their more more sea ventures, etcetera.
And so England actually took a really smart move, you know,
when when the London merchants got together and asked Queen
was before a charter, and so she granted it to
them on December thirty one, six hundred a very grand
day because this charter, you know, which seemed to be

(02:39):
an anocuous piece of paper that allowed people to trade more,
successfully turned England into this major world superpower, and it
started a few precedents. And UM our colleague Josh Clark
writes a great article about UM how the East India
Company changed the world, and in it he talks about
how this company was basically the first joint stock corporation

(03:01):
and what that means. Basically, if you're not you know
into the business jargon, is that investors are given a
share of ownership in the company and if the company
should go under, you're guaranteed not to lose anymore than
what you put in the company. That's right. It was
the first limited liability corporation exactly and here in the
United States we abbreviate that as ll C. Over in

(03:22):
England it's lt D. And it's good news because, especially
in times like these, if a company goes under, you're
guaranteed that you won't be responsible for any outstanding debts
that the company has occurred. So very very smart move on,
Elizabeth's behalf. That's right. And they had this charter, and
the Dutch learned from it. They made their own charter
a couple of years later, and so England was still

(03:43):
catching up with the Dutch for for decades to come.
They would fight each other over over on the other
side of the world. It's interesting to note it took
about a year to go back and forth to the
from the East Indies to Europe. So just to clarify
the route you're talking about, are you talking about, say,
laying down both sides of Africa and through the Cape
of Good Hope, right, Yes, that's right. Thank you for

(04:04):
clarifying that. And so because it took so long for
this transportation, they couldn't whenever they had a dispute, they
couldn't very well come back to their to their original
countries and then come back. It would just take much
too long, and so these companies had their own military resources.
They would fight each other. They would fight even local
areas if the local governor there was just being uncooperative

(04:24):
and they didn't want to deal with it. So they
were catching up with the Dutch for a long time.
There was this interesting book called Splendid Exchange by William Bernstein,
and I love his description of the East India Company
because he calls it the obnoxious kid brother of being
Dutch East India Company, because the Dutch had basically better ships,
better technology, more ships, and the English were just catching

(04:47):
up for so long. It was sort of a case
of anything you can do, I can do better. Yeah,
I took it to the extreme, yeah exactly. And so
the Dutch sort of had control over the Spice Islands
that was their territory, and the and Uh they were
elbowing the Wish two more unprofitable, not as nice ports,
and so the English would have made their way to
India instead. In India they were able to capitalize on

(05:08):
their claws and textiles and not to mention their opium.
And what was rather irresponsible of the East India Company
is that they would force the people and the lands
that they controlled to purchase their commodities only from them.
So they would essentially take hold of all the commodities,
whether it was tea and the American colonies or opium

(05:31):
and the Indian colonies, and they would use that to
to leverage their their power essentially, like we all know
the story of the Boston Tea Party in Jane and
I have done a podcast about it as well. In short,
the East India Company had a bunch of surplus t
that I needed to unload, and the prime target market
where the American colonists, so they made it much much

(05:52):
more attractive to vide tea from the e I. C.
Than from any other purveyor of the tea. And the
colonists did not like being whole where to buy their
stuff from. That's right. One historian put it that the
columnists dumped the t in in the ocean because of
the East India Company was dumping the t on them.
You know, they had their surplus and they they didn't

(06:12):
want to force down their throats. Basically, well, that's that
the colonies are founded on this idea of freedom. So
who is England to come in and say you have
to buy from us? Which is essentially what they were doing. Yeah,
and either way you look at it, it did lead
to the American Revolution, like it was a contributing factor
one of the major events that you know, we're taught
in history class. This helped lead to the war and

(06:33):
you know it helped form the United States today, and
so it's a huge influence at the East India Company
had over the world events. To think that a business
essentially have started a war like that is it's a
really powerful thought. And it's not just in the American
colonies that the e I C provoked this kind of uprising.
You know, we said before that they were trying to

(06:53):
control all the opium exports over in India and it
led to a very similar revolution there. That's right. And
to give you some background on at India was a
very fragmented territory. It wasn't unified by any means. When um,
the East India Company came in. The East India Company
businessmen basically had to make individual deals with all the
local rulers at that time in India, and some were

(07:15):
more cooperative than others. So they made individual contracts, like
I said, and they got at first their textiles in
their claws. They they they made a lot of money
from uh that commodity, but this became less profitable and
they had to shift over to the spices in India.
And they were mostly after China to get Chinese porcelain,

(07:37):
silk and tea, and so you have this multiple trade
system going on. So the Chinese were getting less and
less interested in the textiles, but they were getting more
and more interested in opium. Who would end so opium
became a major a major point in the East India
Company's trade between India and China. And like Candice alluded
to before, no Indian was able to grow opium in

(08:00):
India without selling it to the East India Company, and
so they sold it to China. And basically China had
a lot of problems with this. They didn't want to
deal with this anymore. The Chinese authorities, we should say,
and at least in my history class, the way they
painted it to me was that opium was a highly addictive,
dangerous drug and the East India Company was was very

(08:23):
irresponsible in taking advantage of this. And actually Bernstein, the
history and I mentioned before, he actually said that it's
not wasn't quite like that. Only about one percent of
the Chinese UH smoked opium disession extent that they got addicted,
which is still bad. I mean, opium was a problem
at the time, but also one of the issues was
that the Chinese authorities did they did have a moral

(08:44):
issue with with the opium trade, but it was mostly
about the economy and economic issues involved in opium. About
eighteen o six, the value of opium coming into China
exceeded the value of te going out, and so this
was a problem. The country was starting to hemorrhage UH
silver and so this is what eventually builded up into
two Opium Wars. But another problem that was occurring during

(09:06):
this time was that the British troops essentially we're creating
private armies from the local Indian populations. And so can
you imagine that this foreign corporation comes into your country,
demands that all the farmers around you saw their crafts
only to them, and furthermore, taps you for service in
a private army. It just it didn't seem right, and

(09:28):
so there was an uprising, that's right, and it's called
the Seapoy Rebellion, and sea Boy was the name of
one of these Indian soldiers. Who fought for the East
India Company. But the Seapoint rebellion back in seven it
wasn't exactly successful. Um. It was India's really sort of
first major effort to get their independence from Great Britain,
but it didn't really work because the British Army was

(09:48):
able to overtake them. Not surprisingly, they were outnumbered. So
India was an English colony really until about ninety seven
became a republic. That's right, And I guess that story
deserves a podcast and it's owned because it's you know,
Gandhi and everything. There's so much to talk about in
that arena. But we should also go back and mentioned
that this is around the same time as the two
Opium Wars, which were both uh failures on on China's part,

(10:11):
and so they both just ended up in expanding the
trading rights for the East India Company in China. So
it's a tough situation, it really was. And it's sort
of a side note to all of this. And this
is really a matter more of of personal interest because
last night, when I was reading about the East India Company,
my husband to Dowart, decided, oh, you have to talk
about I p A and Um, being sort of a

(10:33):
beer aficionado, India Pale and he was like, well, you
know what about the role of I p a in
in India? And I didn't really know much about it,
So just you know, as a treat for all of
you out there, you know, for those of you like opium,
you got yours, and now all of your beer lovers
are going to get yours. Essentially, the British were very,
very used to drinking a all. It was something that

(10:54):
was part of their culture. It was something they expected.
It was sort of like I don't know, Southerners like
to drink their sweet tape, people like water. Well, they
expected their beer. But the problem with the trade route
from England to India is that it was so long
and the weather changed so drastically from the site of
the creation to the side of the unloading that they

(11:14):
had to figure out a way to make beer differently
so that it would make it on the trip. It'd
be like driving to the grocery store to get a
gallon of milk and then taking a three hour trip
home not having a cooler in your car by the
time you get there, it's not gonna be good for drinking.
So Um, a town called Burton on Trent had water
that had a really high concentration of gypsum or calcium sulfate,

(11:37):
and this actually helped change the quality of the beer.
In addition to adding extra hops to would make it
really bitter and sort of fruity tasting, but it made
it stronger and had more preservative quality so that they
can mature more quickly and stay more stable. And so
the traders in India, as well as members of the
navy and the army there could drink it and be

(11:58):
happy because they had their beer. And I actually I
got this information from the Meantime Brewing Company, which is
a great website if you're curious about the history of beer.
But I learned there that I p A is considered
a running beer, and running beer means that you can
drink it immediately. It doesn't have to sit around and
mature like Ale does. You know you see in movies

(12:21):
Ale is containing those really big oak barrels where it's
you know, I guess aging and getting more delicious with time.
But it was incredibly popular and the colonists, you know,
drink it up. I think there were a lot at
something like a gallon a day, and maybe even more
after i PA became more successful and you can still
get your IPA today, So who knew you'd be learning
so much about beer today. But you know, we care

(12:42):
about you guys, so that's that. And if you want
to know even more about other subjects or there's something
that tickles your fancy that you want to hear Jen
and me discuss email us at history podcast at how
stuff works dot com. That's right. And if we don't
do a podcast on it, we could write a blog
on it. And if you haven't seen it yet, you
should go to about our blog stuff you miss in
history class on how stuff works dot com and you

(13:04):
can comment on our stuff and we both post choice
to day. So it's a lot of fun. It is.
It's like getting a quick sixty second dose of Candis
and Jane every week day. You're gonna love it. And
if you want to learn even more about the East
India Company or beer or Clean Elizabeth, be sure to
check out articles on how stuff works dot com for

(13:25):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it
how stuff works dot Com